


Ship to Wreck

by Engineer104



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Boats and Ships, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, How Do I Tag, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Pirates, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 10:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11827080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: It's always the same.Katie Holt loses her family. Pidge Gunderson emerges to get them back.This time, she sets sail for the New World.





	Ship to Wreck

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Florence + the Machine song of the same name.
> 
> (Also I can't attest to the historical accuracy of this.)

Pidge is almost out of funds when she finally finds a vessel that will take her to the New World.

In a small Scottish port town, Pidge sits across a desk from the captain, a Spaniard with shockingly ginger hair and mustache, and offers her services as the ship's boy. He scrutinizes her from over his steepled fingertips and says, "You're a bit young to be seeking a new life alone, aren't you?" His English is accented, but she understands him perfectly.

Pidge holds his gaze as she says, "The future is all I have." It's not a lie, but it's a vague enough statement to taste like one.

His eyes don't shift from her, likely weighing her potential for labor against his ship's needs and his ability to pay her. It's a small vessel, and only requires a small crew, built to speed a long journey. Perfect for Pidge's needs.

"I just need passage to the New World, Captain," says Pidge. She swallows nervously; she would prefer payment, but at this point she's desperate enough to labor for free.

"Yes, well, I'm sure we can arrange to pay you a salary, don't fear," the captain reassures her quickly. "I would be glad to have you aboard, as would my employer!" His eyes are sharp, discerning, making Pidge wonder if he can guess more about her than she's willing to share.

A soft knock comes from the door of the captain's cabin, and he says, "Come in!"

The door opens, admitting a broad young man, one of the sailors. "We're ready to be underway, Captain." He then spots Pidge, smiling at her.

"Ah, Hunk!" says the captain. He stands up and approaches . "Why don't you show Pidge here around the ship before we launch? He's our new ship's boy." He chuckles, clapping the sailor - Hunk - on the shoulder.

Hunk's smile turns uncertain and confused when he looks at the captain, but it's welcoming as he returns his attention to Pidge. "Sure!" he agrees. He waves for Pidge to follow him.

Pidge glances at the captain, who says, "Go ahead. After we launch, come back here and we can agree on a salary, shall we?"

Under ordinary circumstances, Pidge would insist they finish bargaining before launch, to leave herself the option of walking away if the deal is not in her favor, but at this point, she's desperate for progress. "I will. Thank you, Captain."

"Oh, it's nothing!" he says, grinning. "Just remember to step lively and shout if you fall off the deck...boy."

He laughs uproariously, as if at a joke that only he understands, as Hunk leads Pidge out of the cabin and onto the deck of the ship.

It's a short tour. Hunk explains Pidge's duties - cleaning the deck and holds, repairing sails, reorganizing cargo, lookout, or anything she might be needed to do - and shows her the galley, the hold, and where she'll be sleeping.

As she expected, but is no less distressed by, she will be sharing a space with almost every other crewmember aboard. Hunk, to his credit, seems to sense some of her alarm, for he says, with some apology, "Only Captain Coran and Lady Allura have private cabins."

"Lady Allura?" Pidge had not known there were other women aboard the ship...and one that wasn't disguised as a boy at that.

"Yeah, she's the _Lion_ 's owner," Hunk explains, "and she's funding the journey. You didn't know that?"

Pidge shakes her head.

"Then why did you choose the _Lion_?" Hunk wonders.

As they talk, he teaches her how to mend canvas sail. The large needle feels clumsy in Pidge's hands, and she notes the irony of performing a 'feminine' task - one she never particularly liked - in a 'masculine' setting.

"It seemed my only choice," Pidge admits.

Hunk frowns, his eyes sympathetic. "I'm sorry."

Pidge makes no reply to that. Instead, curious about what she's getting into, she says, "Tell me about the captain and...Lady Allura."

"Oh, Captain Coran is a fair captain," Hunk says. "Probably the fairest I've served under. And very clean, hates clutter."

Pidge, notorious for 'clutter' at home, makes note of that to herself.

"Funny guy," he continues, "but I almost never understand his jokes. Lady Allura is kind enough but she's strict. She'll help on deck if we need it but for the most part she stays out of the way."

This Pidge finds surprising, if Lady Allura is a noblewoman like her title implies.

"Just work hard and don't flirt with Lady Allura and no one will throw you overboard," adds Hunk with a reassuring smile.

"Why would I do that?" Pidge wonders. "Why would _anyone_ do that?"

"Well, sailors aren't always a...cleancut bunch," Hunk admits, shrugging. "The captain does a good job of screening his hires, but we're a little informal still."

Pidge nods, deciding to take Hunk's words to heart.

When Hunk is called to help with the launch, she returns to the hold to deposit her belongings by her assigned space.

The barracks are filled with a row of hammocks, and Pidge takes one of the few unoccupied ones. Along one wall are a set of cubbyholes, most of them filled with the belongings of other sailors. Pidge finds an empty cubbyhole and unceremoniously stuffs her extra clothes (a pair of trousers and two shirts that once belonged to her brother) and her diary into it. Last, she reaches into her shirt and pulls out her locket, that hangs on a silver chain, tarnished with age, around her neck. Opening it, she looks once more at the miniature portrait, committing her family's faces to memory: her father's arm around her mother's shoulders, her brother's smile.

_"I promise, Mother, I'll find them."_

Pidge takes off the necklace and carefully hides it in a fold of cloth. Then she leaves, determined to become a sailor even if it kills her.

\---

Pidge strikes a surprisingly generous deal with the captain.

"Lady Allura treats her sailors fairly, Pidge," he tells her, smiling, then adding, "But she expects hard work in return."

"Of course, Captain," says Pidge.

"And you say you've never sailed before?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll have Lance show you what you need to learn," says the captain.

Pidge feels a pang of disappointment; she liked Hunk well enough, and she had hoped she could keep her head down and interact with as few members of the crew as possible. "But Hunk already started teaching me," she tells the captain.

"I'm afraid poor Hunk gets seasick," the captain says.

Pidge blinks, surprised. "He's a sailor."

"He's our chef _and_ our carpenter," explains Captain Coran. "Unless we need him, he spends most of his time belowdecks while we're at sea."

"I see..." Pidge stares at her hands, listening to the captain's footsteps as he goes to the cabin door. She listens absentmindedly as he commands a nearby sailor to fetch Lance.

Lance is quick to answer the captain's summons. He enters the cabin, walking confidently - Pidge is instantly jealous; she had already lost count of the number of times she stumbled thanks to the motion of the vessel since they were underway - and approaching.

"Lance, this is Pidge, the new ship's boy," said the captain. "See that you show him what he needs to know, and make sure he doesn't fall into the sea."

"All right," Lance agrees easily. He smiles at Pidge, which she finds disconcerting for some reason; where Hunk's smile had been warm and welcoming, Lance's is...friendly. And friendly people ask questions.

Pidge bids the captain goodbye and follows Lance. To her relief, he's all business for the rest of the day, mostly allowing her to shadow him as he works his shift. He explains everything to her in accented English and introduces her to the rest of the crew. He even includes her in his jokes, most of which...would probably be funnier in Spanish, to a fellow Spaniard, which he freely admits.

At any other time, on any other mission, Pidge might not care, might even welcome friendship with her fellow crewmembers, but with so much on her mind, so much riding on her focus and tenacity, she tries to remain aloof, only responding when necessary.

And so the rest of the first week at sea passes, with Pidge struggling to physically keep up with fit men twice her size, tying down sail and unfurling it as the wind demanded, eating limited provisions and drinking flat beer, and avoiding her crewmembers' attempts at hazing and overtures of friendship.

Most of them, at least, are quick to catch the hint, that the ship's boy would rather be left alone to brood over his cracked and bleeding blisters. Only Hunk and Lance, however, still seek her out for company.

(Of course the two friendliest and _nosiest_ crewmembers on board are best friends and even grew up in the same small Spanish town; _of course_.)

Eventually, thanks to the monotony of the wide open ocean and the calm summer sea, she finds herself accepting them. But carefully, since she keeps her identity and purpose close.

\---

The journey is expected to be two months, which is a long time of the same scenery and day-to-day drudgery. But nighttime is a break, when during the watch Pidge lies on the deck looking up at the wide expanse of the sky, thinking of what she's read about navigating by the stars.

Lance is nearby, also on duty for the evening, and Pidge explains it to him.

She points at a particular star. "That's Polaris," she says, "the North Star. With an astrolabe, you can tell your position on earth and navigate from there."

Lance's eyes follow her finger. "Huh, so that's how it's done?"

"You didn't know?" Pidge asks, surprised.

"I knew the stars are used for...navigation," he says, shrugging, "but I didn't know _that_."

"I thought you've been a sailor for years."

"I have!" Lance says, in the same voice one might say, "How dare you question me!"

"But you're not a navigator."

"No," he says with a trace of bitterness. "That's Keith's job."

Keith was the other new crewmember, besides Pidge. He rarely interacted with the others, though he was still a skilled sailor and did his fair share of the work. Nominally, he was also the first mate, but Lady Allura, the ship's owner, still superceded him in authority.

He also spoke English without a trace of an accent, despite not _looking_ English, and Pidge suspected he was educated, at least more than the majority of the crew.

In fact, apart from Pidge herself, she thought he was likely the most mysterious person aboard.

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear," Lance then says, at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Sure enough, Pidge hears Keith ask, "What are you doing? You're supposed to be on night watch."

"We are!" says Lance. His voice is uncomfortably loud in the nighttime air.

Pidge sits up. "We are," she says, more quietly.

Keith frowns, looking at her. "Then why are you _lying down_? And chatting?" He directs his second statement at Lance.

Pidge fumbles for an excuse. "Because--"

"He's _resting_ ," Lance interrupts. "He's a kid, and it's nighttime!"

The comment, for all its intended helpfulness, annoys Pidge. _Kid._

_"Why can't I come with you?" she had asked her father._

_"Oh, Katie-Kate, you're still so young, but one day you'll go on your own adventure."_

_Oh, the irony,_ Pidge thinks, frowning.

To Lance, she says, "I can speak for myself." She stands, about to do just that, but.

Keith ignores her and says, "And what if there's something in our way? Or pirates pursue us?"

"This far away from land?" Lance scoffs.

"This is an exploratory mission!" Keith reminds them. "We barely know where we're going, let alone what we'll find. But someone might know the waters better than we do."

Lance crosses his arms. "Pirates?" he says, skeptically.

Pidge sighs and rubs her face. The last thing she expected was getting caught on the edge of an argument between the mate and her friend. She wished Hunk wasn't so susceptible to seasickness.

"Keith is right," she intervenes before either of them can say anything else. "We were being careless. It won't happen again."

Lance shoots her a glare, but Pidge ignores him, instead waiting for Keith to acknowledge her.

He does, and rather than looking smug at her agreement, like she might have expected him to, he nods and leaves, apparently satisfied.

Lance waits until he's out of earshot to mutter, "What pirates lurk in the middle of the ocean?"

Pidge, keeping her suspicions - her family's possible fates - to herself, does not reply and instead looks out at the sea, taking in the lesser reflection of the sky above.

\---

Samuel and Matthew Holt were - _are_ \- naturalists, sent on a mission to the New World paid by their scientific institute after they insisted that documenting the environment - the flora, the fauna - there was of extreme importance. They left London with very little fanfare five years ago, along with a guide named Shiro. All three were expected to return after two years in the New World.

But they were never heard from again.

Now Samuel Holt's daughter and Matthew Holt's sister Katherine worked aboard a small Spanish vessel bound for their same destination, posing as a ship's boy with the name Pidge. And as far as the London authorities were concerned, Katherine Holt no longer existed, and Pidge was an orphan boy desperate for a new life in a new place.

Katherine is no more, Pidge reminds herself when she walks into the empty barracks after a shift. The _almost_ empty barracks.

Hunk stands by the wall of cubbyholes, a silver chain dangling from his hand, and holding her locket.

He looks up at the sound of her footsteps, and she fights back her rising panic. _He knows._

He smiles apologetically at her and says something, but her heart is too busy pounding at the beat of _he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows_ for her to hear him.

"What?" she says.

"I said, is this your family?" he asks.

Pidge breaks out of her muddled thoughts and darts forward, snatching the locket from his hand. "Why do you have this?" she demands.

"Oh, I found it on the floor here," Hunk says.

"You didn't go through my stuff?" she says. She clicks the locket shut and slips it into her trouser pocket.

"No," he says.

Pidge exhales shakily. She must have been careless, it must have fallen out of her bundle of clothes, where she always kept it carefully hidden, last time she changed.

"Pidge, are you all right?" Hunk asks.

She looks at him. "I'm fine," she lies.

Hunk, now looking utterly bewildered, remarks, "Your sister looks a lot like you."

Pidge blinks, surprised at the comment. "Uh, thank you," she says, unsure how else to respond to that, while at the same time relieved he mistook her for Matt.

"I thought you didn't have a family though?" he says.

"Everyone has a family," she says, quietly. She reaches back into her pocket and touches the locket, reassuring herself that it was still there.

Hunk frowns. "But..."

"Please stay out of my stuff, Hunk," Pidge says.

"I will," Hunk promises. Then, he hands her a small book, smiles impishly, and leaves.

Pidge utters every curse she knows in every language she knows when she feels the binding of her diary.

\---

"Can Hunk read?" Pidge asks Lance the next time she sees him.

Lance looks up from his mug of beer, an eyebrow raised. "Yes?" he says.

Pidge collapses on the bench across from Lance and buries her face in her hands, cursing.

Lance, to her surprise, laughs. "I'm impressed you've picked all that up in just three weeks, Pidge."

"Shut. Up."

To her relief, he senses her mood and obeys. He doesn't even ask why.

She's grateful for his rare quiet, but rather than stick around to take advantage of it, she stands and returns to the deck despite not being on duty.

Pidge walks the circumference of the ship, silently chanting _he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows_. Would Hunk tell Captain Coran? Or Lady Allura? Or Lance?

What could they even do, this far at sea and still weeks away from land?

Could he blackmail her? But to what purpose?

She dismisses that fear as silly, thinking Hunk would never, but then...did she know him as well as she thought? After all, she kept something as basic as her sex from the crew.

"They'll throw me overboard!" she exclaims. Her eyes widen and she claps her hands over her mouth when she realizes she spoke out loud.

"Did you say something, Pidge?" someone asks from nearby.

She turns her head to spot Keith looking at her, frowning.

"No," she lies.

"No?" he says, sounding skeptical.

"No," she confirms, shaking her head.

Keith leans against the deck railing, back to the water, facing her. He says nothing, doesn't even look at her, but she still feels as if he's waiting for her to say something.

She's scarcely spoken to Keith since coming aboard the _Lion_ and knows next to nothing about him, not even a surname, not even a favorite color.

"What's your favorite color?" she blurts out.

Keith glances at her and says, "Red, I suppose."

"You...'suppose'?"

He shrugs. "Red, like Mars."

"Like Mars," she repeats. She has no idea why she's repeating what he's saying.

"What's yours?" he wonders, and to his credit he sounds genuinely curious.

"Green," she tells him, and adds, "Like grass."

He smiles, as if he thinks it funny, and Pidge finds herself relaxing, if only a little bit.

"Do you have any brothers?" she asks.

Keith turns around to face west, the direction they're sailing, towards where the sun is minutes away from touching the watery horizon. "I have Shiro," he says.

Pidge blinks. She knows that name... unless it's a coincidence.

It could be a coincidence.

She's about to ask about 'Shiro' when the lookout calls out from the crow's nest.

"Man overboard!" he yells.

"What?" Keith says. He strides forward, moving to the bow of the ship, in the direction the lookout faces. Other curious deckhands, including Pidge, follow him.

Keith takes a looking glass from his belt and presses the eyepiece to his eye. From where she stands, she can barely make out a small boat - barely a dinghy - bobbing with the waves. And maybe there's a prone figure inside.

"Pidge, go get the captain," Keith says, his voice tense with alarm.

She heeds him and runs along the deck to the captain's cabin. She pounds on the door, the tension aboard the ship - what is a man in a small boat doing this far out to sea, with no other ship in sight? - infecting her.

"Come in!" calls the captain from inside, and Pidge opens the door to see him conversing with Lady Allura, though they both glance at her when she steps in.

"Captain, Lady, a man in a boat has been spotted ahead of the bow."

The captain and Lady Allura exchange shocked glances, but they are both on their feet and following Pidge to the bow within seconds. Keith wordlessly hands the looking glass to Lady Allura, who then passes it along to the captain.

Her earlier fears forgotten, Pidge stands between Hunk and Lance as the ship draws closer to the drifting boat.

"Throw a line!" commands Captain Coran once they're close enough.

"He's unconscious," Lady Allura says, as if she meant to say that he's dead.

"I'll go," Keith volunteers. He grabs the end of the line.

"No, I will," Lance argues, stepping forward. "You're not a strong enough swimmer."

"But--"

"Lance is right," the captain interrupts.

Keith looks like he wants to protest but then reluctantly passes the rope to Lance. "Careful," he says. "We'll pull you up once you have a hold of him."

"I'm counting on it." Lance claps Keith on the shoulder, to his apparent surprise, and smirks. "It won't take long." Without another word, without even taking off his shirt, he climbs onto the deck railing and dives, sinking into the sea with a quiet splash.

Pidge watches, tense, with everyone else as Lance swims to the boat and clambers in with surprising ease. From their distance, she can't quite tell what's happening, but she assumes he's checking to see if the boat's passenger at least has a pulse.

Apparently, he does, for the next instant Lance waves for them to tug on the line.

The entire crew, including the captain and Lady Allura, pull the line, tugging the boat closer to the ship. When the two vessels are near enough to bump hulls, Lance ties the end of the rope around the man's chest, and he's pulled in first.

Despite the shock of white hair in his bangs and the scar across the bridge of his nose, Pidge feels a prickle of familiarity when she first looks closely at the man's face. And sure enough, at Keith's shocked gasp, Pidge _knows_ that this man is the key to finding her family.

Shiro.

**Author's Note:**

> So I originally conceived this as a reincarnation AU of sorts where Pidge always loses her father and brother, and always 'becomes' Pidge in her efforts to get them back. Naturally as part of the AU, she _remembers_ the losing and the seeking in every life, but never the finding. Which is why this one ends abruptly.
> 
> (Has that been done before?? If it has I'd love to see it...)
> 
> Anyway I have no idea if I'm going to continue this so it remains a cliffhanger-y one-shot for now. Hope you enjoyed!!


End file.
